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The Great Prince Shan, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Chapter 28 |
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_ CHAPTER XXVIII Maggie, very cool and neat, a vision of soft blue, a wealth of colouring in the deep brown of her closely braided hair, her lips slightly parted in a smile of welcome, felt, notwithstanding her apparent composure, a strange disturbance of outlook and senses as Prince Shan was ushered into her flower-bedecked little sitting room that afternoon. The unusual formality of his entrance seemed somehow to suit the man and his manner. He bowed low as soon as he had crossed the threshold and bowed again over her fingers as she rose from her easy-chair. "It makes me very happy that you receive me like this," he told her simply. "It makes it so much easier for me to say the things that are in my heart." "Won't you sit down, please?" Maggie invited. "You are so tall, and I hate to be completely dominated." He obeyed at once, but he continued to talk with grave and purposeful seriousness. "I wish," he said, "to bring myself entirely into accord, for these few minutes, with your western methods and customs. I address you, therefore, Lady Maggie, with formal words, while I keep back in my heart much that is struggling to express itself. I have come to ask you to do me the great honour of becoming my wife." Maggie sat for a few moments speechless. The thing which she had half dreaded and half longed for--the low timbre of his caressing voice--was entirely absent. Yet, somehow or other, his simple, formal words were at least as disturbing. He leaned towards her, a quiet, dignified figure, anxious yet in a sense confident. He had the air of a man who has offered to share a kingdom. "Your wife," Maggie repeated tremulously. "The thought is new to you, perhaps," he went on, with gentle tolerance. "You have believed the stories people tell that in my youth I was vowed to celibacy and the priesthood. That is not true. I have always been free to marry, but although to-day we figure as a great progressive nation, many of the thousand-year-old ideas of ancient China have dwelt in my brain and still sit enshrined in my heart. The aristocracy of China has passed through evil times. There is no princess of my own country whom I could meet on equal terms. So, you see, although it develops differently, there is something of the snobbishness of your western countries reflected in our own ideas." "But I am not a princess," Maggie murmured. "You are the princess of my soul," he answered, lowering his eyes for a moment almost reverently. "I cannot quite hope to make you understand, but if I took for my wife a Chinese lady of unequal mundane rank, I should commit a serious offence against those who watch me from the other side of the grave, and to whom I am accountable for every action of my life. A lady of another country is a different matter." "But I am an Englishwoman," Maggie said, "and I love my country. You know what that means." "I know very well," he admitted. "I had not meant to speak of those things until later, but, for your country's sake, what greater alliance could you seek to-day than to become the wife of him who is destined to be the Ruler of Asia?" Maggie caught hold of her courage. She looked into his eyes unflinchingly, though she felt the hot colour rise into her cheeks. "You did not speak to me of these things, Prince Shan, when I came to your house last night," she reminded him. His smile was full of composure. It was as though the truth which sat enshrined in the man's soul lifted him above all the ordinary emotions of fear of misunderstandings. "For those few minutes," he confessed, "I was very angry. It brings great pain to a man to see the thing he loves droop her wings, flutter down to earth, and walk the common highway. It is not for you, dear one, to mingle with that crowd who scheme and cheat, hide and deceive, for any reward in the world, whether it be money, fame, or the love of country. You were not made for those things, and when I saw you there, so utterly in my power, having deliberately taken your risk, I was angry. For a single moment I meant that you should realise the danger of the path you were treading. I think that I did make you realise it." Her eyes fell. He seemed to have established some compelling power over her. He had met her thoughts before they were uttered, and answered even her unspoken question. "I wish you didn't make life so much like a kindergarten," she complained, with an almost pathetic smile at the corners of her lips. "It is a very different place," he rejoined fervently, "that I desire to make of life for you. Listen, please. I have spoken to you first the formal words which make all things possible between us, and now, if I may, I let my heart speak. Somewhere not far from Pekin I have a palace, where my lands slope to the river. For five months in the year my gardens are starred with blue and yellow flowers, sweet-smelling as the almond blossom, and there are little pagodas which look down on the blue water, pagodas hung with creepers, not like your English evergreens, but with blossoms, pink and waxen, which open as one looks at them and send out sweet perfumes. When you are there with me, dear one, then I shall speak to you in the language of my ancestors, which some day you will understand, and you shall know that love has its cradle in the East, you shall feel the flame of its birth, the furnace of its accomplishment. Here my tongue moves slowly, yet I stoop my knee to you, I show you my heart, and my lips tell you that I love. What that love is you shall learn some day, if you have the will and the confidence and the soul. Will you come back to China with me, Maggie?" She rested her fingers on his hand. "You are a magician," she confessed. "I am very English, and yet I want to go." He stood for a moment looking into her eyes. Then he stooped down and raised her hesitating fingers to his lips. "I believe that you will come," he said simply. "I believe that you will ride over the clouds with me, back to the country of beautiful places. So now I speak to you of serious things. Of money there shall be what you wish, more than any woman even of your rank possesses in this country. I shall give you, too, the sister of my great _Black Dragon_ so that in five days, if you wish, you can pass from any of my palaces to London. And further than that, behold!" He drew from his pocket a roll of papers. Maggie recognised it, and her heart beat faster. Curiously enough, just then she scarcely thought of its world importance. She remembered only those few moments of strange thrills, the wonder at finding him in that room, as he stood watching her, the horror and yet the thrill of his measured words. He laid the papers upon the table. "Read them," he invited. "You will understand then the net that has been closing around your country. You will understand the better if I tell you this. China and Japan are one. It was my first triumph when patriotism urged me into the field of politics. We have a single motto, and upon that is based all that you may read there,--'_Europe for the Europeans, Asia for us_.'" Maggie was conscious of a sudden sense of escape from her almost mesmeric state. The change in his tone, his calm references to things belonging to another and altogether different world, had dissolved a situation against the charm of which she had found herself powerless, even unwilling to struggle. Once more she was back in the world where for the last two years had lain her chief interests. She took the papers in her hand and began reading them quickly through. Every now and then a little exclamation broke from her lips. "You will observe," her companion pointed out, looking over her shoulder, "that on paper, at any rate, Japan is the great gainer. She takes Australia, New Zealand and India. China absorbs Thibet and reestablishes her empire of forty years ago. The arrangement is based very largely on racial conditions. China is a self-centered country. We have not the power of fusion of the Japanese. You will observe further, as an interesting circumstance, that the American foothold in Asia disappears as completely as the British." "But tell me," she demanded, "how are these things to be brought about, and where does Immelan come in?" Prince Shan smiled. "Immelan's position," he explained, "is largely a sentimental one, yet on the other hand he saves his country from what might be a grave calamity. The commercial advantages he gains under this treaty might seem to be inadequate, although in effect they are very considerable. The point is this. He soothes his country of the pain which groans day by day in her limbs. He gratifies her lust for vengeance against Great Britain without plunging her into any desperate enterprise." "And France escapes," she murmured. "France escapes," he assented. "Rightly or wrongly, the whole of Germany's post-war animosity was directed against England. She considered herself deceived by certain British statesmen. She may have been right or wrong. I myself find the evidence conflicting. At this moment the matter does not concern us." "And is Great Britain, then," Maggie asked, "believed to be so helpless that she can be stripped of the greater part of her possessions at the will of China and Japan?" Prince Shan smiled. "Great Britain," he reminded her, "has taken the League of Nations to her heart. It was a very dangerous thing to do." "Still," Maggie persisted, "there remains the great thing which you have not told me. These proposals, I admit, would strike a blow at the heart of the British Empire, but how are they to be carried into effect?" "If I had signed the agreement," he replied, "they could very easily have been carried into effect. You have heard already, have you not, through some of your agents, of the three secret cities? In the eastern-most of them is the answer to your question." She smiled. "Is that a challenge to me to come out and discover for myself all that I want to know?" "If you come," he answered, "you shall certainly know everything. There is another little matter, too, which waits for your decision." "Tell me of it at once, please," she begged, with a sudden conviction of his meaning. He obeyed without hesitation. "I spoke just now," he reminded her, "of the three secret cities. They are secret because we have taken pains to keep them so. One is in Germany, one in Russia, and one in China. A casual traveller could discover little in the German one, and little more, perhaps, in the Russian one. Enough to whet his curiosity, and no more. But in China there is the whole secret at the mercy of a successful spy. A man named Jesson, Lady Maggie--" "I telephoned you about him before luncheon to-day," she interrupted. "I had your message," he replied, "and the man is safe for the moment. At the same time, Lady Maggie, let me remind you that this is a game the rules of which are known the world over. Jesson has now in his possession the secret on which I might build, if I chose, plans to conquer the world. He knew the penalty if he was discovered, and he was discovered. To spare his life is sentimentalism pure and simple, yet if it is your will, so be it." "You are very good to me," she declared gratefully, "all the more good because half the time I can see that you scarcely understand." "That I do not admit," he protested. "I understand even where I do not sympathise. You make of life the greatest boon on earth. We of my race and way of thinking are taught to take it up or lay it down, if not with indifference, at any rate with a very large share of resignation. However, Jesson's life is spared. From what I have heard of the man, I imagine he will be very much surprised." She gave a little sigh of relief. "You have given me a great deal of your confidence," she said thoughtfully. "Is it not clear," he answered, "why I have done so? I ask of you the greatest boon a woman has to give. I do not seek to bribe, but if you can give me the love that will make my life a dream of happiness, then will it not be my duty to see that no shadow of misfortune shall come to you or yours? China stands between Japan and Russia, and I am China." She gave him her hands. "You are very wonderful," she declared. "Remember that at a time like this, it is not a woman's will alone that speaks. It is her soul which lights the way. Prince Shan, I do not know." He smiled gravely. "I leave," he told her, "on Friday, soon after dawn." She found herself trembling. "It is a very short time," she faltered. They had both risen to their feet. He was close to her now, and she felt herself caught up in a passionate wave of inertia, an absolute inability to protest or resist. His arms were clasped around her lightly and with exceeding gentleness. He leaned down. She found herself wondering, even in that tumultuous moment, at the strange clearness of his complexion, the whiteness of his firm, strong teeth, the soft brilliance of his eyes, which caressed her even before his lips rested upon hers. "I think that you will come," he whispered. "I think that you will be very happy." _ |
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